"If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you’ve arrived?"
We are teachers spending two weeks in the month of June, 2011 in the EDAP 688 class "Developing a Technology Rich Curriculum" offered through the University of Louisville's College of Education and Human Development. Our purpose is to explore the UbD and TPACK framework and learn of its implications for our students while creating a technology rich unit of studies.
Goal:
This wiki will provide a collaborative structure to develop our understanding of Understanding by Design, or UbD, is an increasingly popular tool for educational planning focused on "teaching for understanding".The emphasis of UbD is on "backward design", the practice of looking at the outcomes in order to design curriculum units, performance assessments, and classroom instruction.The UbD framework was designed by nationally recognized educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Our framework and assessing tool will be the TPACK Framework.
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) attempts to capture some of the essential qualities of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of teacher knowledge. At the heart of the TPACK framework, is the complex interplay of three primary forms of knowledge: Content (CK), Pedagogy (PK), and Technology (TK). See Figure below.
“innovation must be part and parcel of the ordinary, the norm, if not routine.” Peter Drucker
If education at its foundation is about understanding, than what is understanding? And how does technology fit into this discussion? Carl Bereiter talks about the need for a rethinking of what we mean by understanding. He connects understanding to becoming producers of knowledge. He asks,
” … one must think of a developmental trajectory leading from the natural inquisitiveness of the young child to the disciplined creativity of the mature knowledge producer. The challenge, then, will be to get students on to that trajectory. But what is the nature of this trajectory and of movement along it?“
The past 10 years has seen an incredible growth in the belief of foundational knowledge. You learn the basics first. You are tested to see if you “got it”, with remediation for the poor souls who don’t. Even more telling is the practice of teaching “sub-skills” to develop competencies in curricular havens of specific content goals. The pursuit of the acquisition of these component sub-skills are pursued as ends unto themselves without connections to purpose. This is very popular in education now under the label of 21st Century Skills. Large publishers of education software claim to have programs that “build skills upon skills until the student reaches mastery”. What ever mastery is.
“Uh oh I see this one coming.”. That is what you are thinking. Another old guy swimming upstream against the NCLB flood of “Test, Test, Did you test them? and Test them again? Test until mastery!” Who defines mastery? Do we ever reach Mastery? Really?
As for technology use in the classroom, why do we need to develop ANOTHER set of skills as teachers. Isn’t it enough to “know” my content! As teachers who become equipped with technology tools that allow students to research, question, theorize, and rethink their theories we become guides to true understanding. Why do we need to in a world that pushes canned solutions? Watch the videos below and tell me your thinking in a discussion post.
We are teachers spending two weeks in the month of June, 2011 in the EDAP 688 class "Developing a Technology Rich Curriculum" offered through the University of Louisville's College of Education and Human Development. Our purpose is to explore the UbD and TPACK framework and learn of its implications for our students while creating a technology rich unit of studies.Goal:
This wiki will provide a collaborative structure to develop our understanding of Understanding by Design, or UbD, is an increasingly popular tool for educational planning focused on "teaching for understanding".The emphasis of UbD is on "backward design", the practice of looking at the outcomes in order to design curriculum units, performance assessments, and classroom instruction.The UbD framework was designed by nationally recognized educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Our framework and assessing tool will be the TPACK Framework.
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) attempts to capture some of the essential qualities of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of teacher knowledge. At the heart of the TPACK framework, is the complex interplay of three primary forms of knowledge: Content (CK), Pedagogy (PK), and Technology (TK). See Figure below.
Go here for resources for TPACK on our class TPACK Wiki
This post was originally published June 4, 2008 at http://sbswan.edublogs.org/2008/06/04/can-we-talk-here/
“innovation must be part and parcel of the ordinary, the norm, if not routine.”
Peter Drucker
If education at its foundation is about understanding, than what is understanding? And how does technology fit into this discussion? Carl Bereiter talks about the need for a rethinking of what we mean by understanding. He connects understanding to becoming producers of knowledge. He asks,
” … one must think of a developmental trajectory leading from the natural inquisitiveness of the young child to the disciplined creativity of the mature knowledge producer. The challenge, then, will be to get students on to that trajectory. But what is the nature of this trajectory and of movement along it?“
The past 10 years has seen an incredible growth in the belief of foundational knowledge. You learn the basics first. You are tested to see if you “got it”, with remediation for the poor souls who don’t. Even more telling is the practice of teaching “sub-skills” to develop competencies in curricular havens of specific content goals. The pursuit of the acquisition of these component sub-skills are pursued as ends unto themselves without connections to purpose. This is very popular in education now under the label of 21st Century Skills. Large publishers of education software claim to have programs that “build skills upon skills until the student reaches mastery”. What ever mastery is.
“Uh oh I see this one coming.”. That is what you are thinking. Another old guy swimming upstream against the NCLB flood of “Test, Test, Did you test them? and Test them again? Test until mastery!” Who defines mastery? Do we ever reach Mastery? Really?
As for technology use in the classroom, why do we need to develop ANOTHER set of skills as teachers. Isn’t it enough to “know” my content! As teachers who become equipped with technology tools that allow students to research, question, theorize, and rethink their theories we become guides to true understanding. Why do we need to in a world that pushes canned solutions? Watch the videos below and tell me your thinking in a discussion post.
Authored by sbswan. Hosted by Edublogs.
Henrico 21 Overview from HCPS Instructional Technology on Vimeo.